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Thursday, September 8, 2016

It is the 6th7th8th 9th of September and obviously I started writing this blog post several days ago. I am also hoping against hope that Summer is sort of officially over. Yes, I know that is just a nutty thing to say, considering that I live in the Frozen Northeast Ohio where the winter is long. We only have 66 totally sunny days A YEAR around here. The total number of days when we see the sun of any kind is only around 167. Clouds like us here.

But I am just about done with summer. I know this because I look at all of my flowers and think, "It isn't THAT hot out (94F yesterday). I will water them tomorrow." They shrivel and dry out and all I can think about is putting in some Fall flowers....or not. Flowers, whether Spring, Summer or Fall, have to be watered and my watering mojo has gone with the summer.

Maybe it is just that HHBL and I tried to pack an entire Summer's worth of stuff into 48 hours over the Labor Day weekend. Believe me, it isn't like we haven't done anything this summer because we have. But we just had a busy weekend. Saturday I coordinated my last wedding of the year. I should say that my compatriot Marj and I coordinated the wedding because we really need two coordinators to cover all the ground. 7 bridesmaids. 2 flower girls. 5 separate sets of grandparents. 4 sets of parents. A cast of thousands. And a last minute scratching of the third flower girl from the program for misbehavior. She was only 14 months after all and there was no way that she was going to actually walk down the aisle. It might have been the whole manic running and screaming that sealed the deal. Or am I just being picky?

Because it was Labor Day weekend there were boat loads of things to do. HHBL and I elected to go to Cleveland Oktoberfest on Saturday evening, a mere hour after I arrived home from the wedding. My legs were not pleased with me. Just enough time to change, down some Tylenol and grab some $ for beer because, you know, OKTOBERFEST. Actually, we have found that the best deal for us is to buy 12 $1 drink tickets that gets us each 6, 3oz "samples" of the craft beers that are on tap in the afternoon and evening. We elect NOT to drink copious steins of beer from the large national brewery that sponsors the event because....we are beer snobs. I shall not apologize for my beer snobbishness. If I am going to consume calories in the form of beer I want it to be something that is worth my drinking time. Also, I will admit that I keep a list of the "Big Three" breweries and any smaller breweries that they have consumed and we avoid those.

I digressed. No surprise there.

6 of those little samples equals 18oz of beers with at least 7.8% ABV equals a happy evening.

And I might have eaten all of this. Schnitzel and sauerkraut and potato pancake. OH MY! I have a rather large love of sauerkraut so this sandwich was pretty much deep fried salty nirvana for me. It certainly stayed with me long after consuming.

I will spare you the videos of the bagpipe band which I made HHBL sit through. Bagpipes, my happy place. I can't explain it but the sound of wailing bagpipes just makes me happy. Just add it to the list of my oddities.

We were home in time to watch a movie (Fathers and Daughters, Russell Crowe, pretty good) and then collapse into bed.

Sunday. Church. Then......The Great Geauga County Fair, which will be a post all it's own because.....lots of pictures. Just know that I consumed large quantities of lemonade (a new thing for me this year), onion rings and 4H milkshakes. In all the years that we have been going to the fair we haven't gone on a Sunday. Definitely a popular day for a lot of people.

Home from the fair in time to spend a couple of hours on the couch trying to digest my consumption of total crap food and then back out the door to go to our last Blossom concert of the year. It was "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with the orchestra playing the actual score. We looked at each other and thought, "we might want to get there a bit early, just in case it is crowded."

Crowded! We were packed into the lawn like chickens in one of those trucks that you see on the highway. You know the ones with chickens stacked up a mile high, heads and butts akimbo. We did get there early, 2.5 HOURS early, had a small altercation with a rude parking attendant who said we couldn't park where we wanted and to "get the heck back in line." I won't repeat what I said. We were not the first, or second person to put up their chairs on the lawn. Our favorite place is at the top of the hill, right in the middle. Easy access to the bathroom and easy getting out before the crowds. By the time the concert started there wasn't a 3x3 foot square of land that was open. I have never seen so many people there. And now I will make a confession. HHBL and I have seen "Raiders of the Lost Ark" perhaps a hundred times. We can quote all of the dialogue. We looked at each other, looked at the crowd and left right about the time that the bad guys wee going to take the ark to open it up. We can watch that at home and we would rather get out of the parking lot in a reasonable time. We are evidently actually 90 year old cranky people.

But we were still home at a reasonable time.

Labor Day we.....labored at all of the things that we hadn't done over the weekend because we were doing othe things. That is what Labor Day is for right?

Is it Fall yet? What does it matter. If you could see my calendar for the next few months you would know.....